Putting this one together was not easy, getting it out the door on time was stressful—there were all sorts of fiery e-mails and late-night phone calls, the waving of arms and the gnashing of teeth—but now the issue exists, and I can hardly remember any of the frustration involved in creating it.
It's alive, and it's beautiful.
Today I’m working on the Integrated Amplifiers section of the Stereophile Buyer’s Guide. Have I ever told you that I love integrated amplifiers? I do. I love integrated amplifiers because they make my life easier—they add convenience, that is—without necessarily sacrificing quality.
I remember the day I walked into Jonathan Scull’s office—Jonathan was our senior editor at the time, and I was Ariel Bitran’s age, just starting out as editorial assistant—and I asked Jonathan what an integrated…
It may have started in 2005 with a new series of compositions that he called “Book of Angels: Masada Book Two.” Masada was the quartet he formed in the early ‘90s (one of that decade’s most exciting and signature jazz bands). More to the point here, it was a book of eventually over 300…
Fang Bian, designer of the Head-Direct HiFiMAN HM-801 portable music player, is a 31-year old audiophile, music lover, and student of Nanotechnology at Hunter College in the City University of New York. In the early 1990s, Fang bought his first CD player, and, with it, discovered his curious attraction to audio.
It was 1993, and a Sony ad running in a Chinese audio magazine caught Fang’s attention. The ad was for one of Sony’s portable music players. Fang was so impressed by the looks, obvious convenience, and promised performance of this thing that he…
In the past decade or so, we’ve come to expect 10 or 15 magical minutes from a Rollins concert, a long passage, maybe two, of transcendence—when the saxophone colossus unlocks a new passageway into the…
Interesting.
The song begins and ends with looping guitar and voice, creating a nice circular structure; the song is endless, perhaps. The thick, crunchy guitar tone, balanced as it is with fine high end light, is extremely cool and expertly handled by Young, and the video—especially the hot girl parts—is intriguing. But I’m less impressed by Young’s vocal delivery and the lyrical content, which strike me as being a bit weak and lazy. It’s an angry…
Awhoooo! (That's the sound of the wolfman.)
But, then, after I watched the video, and saw Jack White cutting open the 12” with a knife to extract the 7” single from its outer casing, I thought to myself, “Oh, damn, now I have to post another blog entry.”
The Dead Weather’s new single, “Blue Blood Blues,” will be released on September 17th, in three very different versions: a 7” backed with a live version of “Jawbreaker;” a 12” backed with a live version of “No Hassle Night”/“I Just Want to Make…